


Dust and Gold

by KingsAndThieves (TehLotteh)



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Character Study, Characters left open to interpretation, Deity Au, F/M, Melancholic Ending, death mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-25
Updated: 2016-03-25
Packaged: 2018-05-29 00:59:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6352555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TehLotteh/pseuds/KingsAndThieves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Of all the names their worshippers had given them, they had no need of them to refer to each other for their bond was so integral to their being that such titles were useless. There were neither words nor gestures effective enough to describe the connection they shared, but instead they saw the other in all living things; the sun, the moon, the day and the night. For they were all of these things, and they were none of these things.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dust and Gold

**Author's Note:**

> The main two ideas I had going here were Ladybug and Chat Noir, or Tikki and Plagg, but it's left open to however you want to interpret it. I was chatting with [@sweetnemesis91](http://sweetnemesis91.tumblr.com/) about AUs and this came up and I couldn't resist testing it out.
> 
> Just want to mention a warning for brief mentions of terrorism and rape and murder near the end, but very VERY brief (as in a sentence, perhaps).

 

For as long as there had been life within the world, there had been deities known to watch over it and nurture it all. They went by many names in many languages, each culture developing their own ideals about their divine guardians. Objects and symbols became physical representations, the seasons signs of the power and strength of one or another. People instinctively feared winter for its lack of life and harsh conditions, and embraced the coming spring with open arms and tears of joy. For just as they feared each night that the sun would not rise, so too did they fear that the indomitable reign of ice would never break.

Of all the deities who blessed their little ball of existence with their grace and strengths, there were two that bore the most power of all, for though their talents did not overlap they held the world in perfect balance - the goddess of fortune, felicity and fertility, and the god of death, despair and destruction.

Isis and Osiris, Coatlicue and Mictlantecuhtli, Hera and Hades; of all the names their worshippers had given them, they had no need of them to refer to each other for their bond was so integral to their being that such titles were useless. There were neither words nor gestures effective enough to describe the connection they shared, but instead they saw the other in all living things; the sun, the moon, the day and the night. For they were all of these things, and they were none of these things.

Strength came from belief, and above all else the one aspect of existence that every living creature knew to fear was death. And so, in the harsh beginnings of their fragile life, his power grew and grew, interminable ice and winter gripping the world tightly in its grasp and squeezing the breath out of all those who were unfortunate enough to fall into it. He watched as young were separated from their families, frozen to death by his touch, witnessed mourning after mourning and tears after tears; he could do nothing but stand by as humans and animals alike starved in the harsh climate, helpless as famine and disease claimed all they could.

He stood by as tensions increased, individuals manically fighting in an attempt to secure what resources they could wiping out considerably more of their kind. It was jeopardising this poor world, but he was death and destruction incarnate and he was powerless to change his design.

He sat on the mat of a crudely built home as he watched a mother, too weak and frail for her task, struggle to bring her young child into the world. He had seen it so many times before, two lives lost where before there had been only one, leaving a lover and a family to mourn the absence and curse his cruel touch. He could do nothing but wait to welcome them into the afterlife, to do what he could do keep them content and at peace after they were so cruelly wronged at no fault of their own, for it was always the innocent who suffered and the wicked who prevailed, such was the curse of his gift.

He had been struck with wonder as with a miraculous touch of fortune, the tables turned and mother and child made it through the ordeal without loss, the father collapsing to his knees and praising the miracle that he had just witnessed. The deity was confused, in awe, and looking up he saw a smiling gaze from the door to the home; with two eyes, as blue as the sky and sparkling with the light of a thousand stars, she met his gaze and tilted her head, and then she was gone.

He chased her through the landscape, through snow and rock, through trees and sky, but she always danced just out of his reach. He watched as everywhere she touched, snow melted, buds springing forth on trees, and watched how she seemed to grow stronger with every step while he felt his own weaken. He chased her to the top of the mountains, finding her stood as she watched over the village with a soft glow, beaming with pride as word of her gift started to spread. The winter was breaking. The world's first spring was arriving. There was life, there was joy.

There was hope.

He stood beside her, a dark abyss of light in comparison, and surveyed the scene before him. People died, animals died, as creatures were wont to do, but there was a lightness in their hearts that he knew he could never have caused. With hope and fortune civilisation progressed, longevity extended, and all the while she grew brighter and brighter until he was sure she would rival the sun herself.

He watched as millennia passed and the balance of the world shifted, though as the world warmed and the population grew, he fell weaker and weaker. He was sat one year in the burning sun, watching and waiting for natural deaths to occur, aware of her appearance behind him just as he was aware of every last breath drawn, of every accidental fire or murder or crime. She knelt behind him and wrapped her arms around his increasingly frail form, her chin resting on his head as they just watched lives blink before them, couples falling in love, families growing and festivals celebrated.

She was warm to his touch of ice, and he fed off her strength, melting into her embrace and feeling the resonating connection he could share with no other. She felt him shudder, looking back over her people. So happy, so warm and content as spring never left them, no shortage of food or cold weather to put them at risk of infection or illness.

He watched in wonder as plants started to die, leaves drying up and falling from trees. Food ran scarce and people grew ill, and he turned to her with a look of devastation in his eyes. She said nothing but merely smiled, a hand on his cheek. He watched her grow weaker as his own strength returned, snow falling once more upon the many mortal lives below.

Incredulously, he heard children screaming with joy as they ran out into the white coating on the floor, playing, laughing, and as he looked to her he realised that she had not grown as frail as he had, for while she had removed her environment of fertility and fresh life in order for him to recuperate, there was still hope within the world, and that was enough for her.

As half a year passed, he returned the gesture, causing his season of cold and absence of life to recede so that she may benefit once more, and he could see in her eyes that the gesture meant more to her than she could ever show. A half year later and she reciprocated once more. The cycle of seasons became established, both sacrificing their own power long enough for the other to rest up properly, and in turn the mortals seemed to accept that this is how the world would be, that they would have to take the good with the bad, and for a time the world was at peace.

Just as her talent would manifest in random bursts of fortune, such as an abundant harvest or a stroke of genius for a struggling philosopher, a moment of pure imagination sparking a literary legend or an artistic masterpiece, so too did his culminate into moments of pure terror.

The first time they stood side by side, surveying the bloody field of corpses that resembled some macabre marsh, he could do nothing as she cried for the loss of her people, lives that she had helped cultivate and nurture into the best they could be. She cried and she wept and her people wept with her, for brothers, fathers, sisters and mothers lay lifeless on the ground and filled the rivers red with their blood.

She never blamed him, not once, for she knew he had no more control over his power as she did hers. The people may revere them as the ultimate deities but they were more vessels than anything, embodiments of the qualities that they had become known for. He left her then, isolating himself away from her civilisations in an attempt to keep the next catastrophe from causing her harm, but no place was secluded enough to keep the backlash from damaging her children.

An earthquake in the mountains brought a volcano to erupt, hot lava burning her people alive and freezing them in place for all eternity, their lives captured and remembered in their final moments of terror as mothers wrapped their bodies around their children and lovers spent their last seconds together crying in each others arms.

A storm at sea brought waves upon waves crashing down on fishing boats, wreckage coming in to land and bringing corpses with them.

Even in the most inhospitable places on earth, there were people. People he couldn't help but hurt, but kill. Wars he couldn't help but spark, fires that burned and lives that burned out and no matter how he tried he left a trail of death and torment in his wake.

She was always there, though. She could not stop them all, she could not save them all, but in every disaster that he caused, there was someone whose life she had protected. What fortune that the avalanche had not buried that house under completely. What luck that their uncle had been too ill to go fishing that day. Two lives brought together in war, a nurse and a soldier, remained together for their duration and spoke out for better rights against humanity.

Wherever tragedy struck, there was hope not far behind. As dark as things may get, she was always there to make it better afterwards.

She knew something was wrong when the snow stopped falling.

People still fought, earthquakes still happened, war still tore children from their parents arms and death still claimed lives relentlessly.

But the snow wasn't falling.

She walked among the cities, so big and vast compared to what they once were. She remembered those first villages, the first families, how small and fragile they had been. The first prayers, the first thank yous, the first I love yous and I miss yous.

Now she could walk among the streets and have no knowledge of the lives these people lead, what fortunes or misfortunes would strike them on a daily basis, who needed her help and who already had her help. She listened in as people talked about anything and everything.

That new song that wouldn't get out of a girl's head.

The old family dog who passed away the night before.

Politicians.

Celebrities.

_Global warming._

The world was warming and his winter was not coming, and she did not understand why.

She searched for him, high and low, day and night, mourning the realisation that no longer could she feel him without conscious effort, no longer was he an extension of her own self.

She saw terrorism and explosions and mass murder, serial killers and rapists and the worst the world could be. She followed them, as much as it pained her to see, and she watched as children were massacred by men with no reason, lovers beating lovers, people blowing up themselves and others all in the name of religion. It tore her apart to see such mindless violence, but everywhere she went, everywhere she saw widespread chaos, he was not.

She found him eventually, sat on the top of a building as he overlooked a rally, a humanitarian speech, his legs kicking idly over the edge as he leaned forward. He had always been a ray of gold in the dark, his eyes the brightest green and his hair the colour of amber; yet here he was a pale shell of his former self, his skin pale and translucent, his locks dull and flat.

His eyes were merely shades of grey, lacklustre and lifeless as he watched all that was going on.

She came and sat beside him with concern in her eyes, but he would not acknowledge her, gaze fixated as it was on the sights and sounds before him. She lay into his side and placed her head on his shoulder, trying to feed him her strength as she had all that time ago, and felt herself slump as he refused to accept her offer.

She decided to remain with him, following his gaze to the people below, wondering what it was that had caught his attention so, leaving him enraptured to the point of oblivion.

_...more loss..._

_Thousands killed.. cities destroyed.._

_...the evil that stalks us is no more than the inner workings of man.._

She felt him shudder violently against her, alarmed as he paled even more drastically.

People had always feared death. It was human nature, animal instinct even, to fear the very concept of death.

Misfortune always struck, accidents always happened.

People loved, people lost. Lives were given, lives were taken.

People still feared death. It was Death himself that they no longer feared.

After all, what point was there in believing in a higher power with the realisation that the catalyst was within yourself?

She held him as he trembled, burying his head in the crook of her neck as she stroked fingers through his hair, seeking to comfort him, to reassure him, promise after promise leaving her lips as she swore she would help him. She did all she could, she kept her gifts to herself as much as she could, watching as crops failed, people fought, people argued, but they didn't blame it on him.

They blamed it on themselves.

Their abuse of the planet, their lack of respect for nature and for themselves. Playing the god with their understanding of science, changing things that should never have been changed.

She couldn't withhold her fortune forever, couldn't stop new lives being brought in, couldn't stop the small joys that people found within their daily lives. It was merely human nature to be resilient, to find the little lights of hope to focus on no matter how dreary their days grew.

It was human nature not to be aware of the absence of their deities, disappearing one by one, putting all their faith in their own intelligence and forgetting the once worshipped gods and goddesses that shaped their very world.

The only thing they never seemed to stop believing in, and the only thing she wished they would, was the very thing she stood for.

It was just her luck, in the end.


End file.
